Copyright

Copyright information for repository users

You may copy whole papers for your individual, personal non-commercial use subject to copyright laws of the country in which you reside, providing the material is properly attributed. If the material is required for any other purpose, you should contact the author or publisher direct as requests of this nature are not processed through this repository.

Copyright information for contributors

What do I do about copyright?

Copyright ownership does not change hands when you place material in the repository and so will be continue to be retained either by the author/s or the publisher. We are not asking you, nor would we want to encourage you, to transfer copyright to the repository.

However we need to ensure the Library/Repository has the right to make your work available online and to do what is necessary with it to keep it accessible, such as migrate it to updated formats as that becomes necessary. Repository staff will not make material publicly available until we are confident we have authorisation to do so. One of our jobs is to work with you to get it right.

When you contribute your work to USC Research Bank, we ask that you agree to the Author Deposit Agreement that allows us to include your work if you hold the copyright, or to seek permissions on your behalf if copyright is held by the publisher. We ask that you have the permission of your co-authors (if necessary) and any other people whose copyright is included in your work when you contribute to USC Research Bank.

Where the full version of your work cannot be included due to copyright restrictions, we can still include the citation details with a link to the full version on the publisher's website.

Doesn't the publisher own the copyright in my published works?

Some publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, allow authors to deposit the pre-publication version of their article into a repository. Alternatively, we may be able to link to the published version on the publisher's website. The SHERPA RoMEO project provides a searchable database of publisher policies regarding repositories and is a good starting point. For conferences, it is best to contact the publisher of the conference proceedings directly.

Repository staff can help you determine what your rights are and assist you to get the necessary clearance to put your paper into the repository.

What version of my research can I deposit

This may depend on what the publisher allows. Publishers sometimes permit the last pre-publication version i.e. the text you send to the publisher, to be included in the repository, but it is always best to double check your publisher's agreement. What you can't do is take the final published version - with all the formatting from the electronic version of a journal, and put that version in the repository - unless of course the publisher has authorised this.

There are two versions of a work that can be included in USC Research Bank:

Published version – this is the version as it appears in the journal or proceedings, and if we can include this version, we can usually source it from the publisher.

Postprint or Authors accepted version – this is the final text of an article once it has gone through the editorial and peer review process, but before proofreading and typesetting by the publisher. If the publisher requires us to use this version, we will contact you to see if you have one available.

Preprint or submitted version - this is the final draft of the article prior to submission to the publisher.

Metadata rights

Harvesting fulltext documents from this repository is not permitted; however, metadata can be harvested by third parties for purposes related to the discovery of the archive's contents.

Do you think your copyright has been infringed?

If you believe copyright work that is available on this site constitutes copyright infringement or a breach of agreed licence or contract, please use the Notification of Infringement Form.

This form is designed for you to provide sufficient information for our investigation and response.